> I Dream of Daisies
>  by Ezn
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Nightmare Audition
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


I Dream of Daisies: "Nightmare Audition"
by Ezn


Rainbow Dash glanced nervously over her left shoulder and slowly swept her eyes across the length of the hallway. She had to be sure that nopony had followed her – if word of where she was and whom she was visiting were to get out, it would ruin her reputation for sure, killing her chances of ever joining the Wonderbolts.
 
The hallway was silent and empty. After quickly checking for spies behind a large fern, Rainbow breathed a sigh of relief and finally stepped up to the door she had come in search of. Her hooves made no noise on the thick carpeting.
 
The door was a plain, wood affair with a small misted-glass window set into the frame above it and a rectangular white sign pinned to it at eye level. Rainbow cast her eyes over the neat black words.
 

Daisy Dreams
Subconscious Investigator


With a tentative forehoof, Rainbow knocked. For a brief moment between the second and third knocks, she considered turning around and sprinting away – she was certainly fast enough to get away with it – but she instead remained at her position before the door, her legs quivering only slightly.
 
"Come in," said a voice behind the door. "It's unlocked."
 
Steeling her resolve for the fiftieth time that day, Rainbow pushed the door open and stepped into the office beyond, her eyes staring straight ahead of her.
 
Compared to the images of the place that Rainbow's mind had been manufacturing ever since she had first heard of Daisy Dreams, the actual office was something of a let-down. Rather than a smoky den of mystique filled with crystal balls and exotic decorations, or a mess of wires, blinking lights and esoteric scientific equipment, the office was a plain room with a desk and a few filing cabinets. Behind the desk sat a purple earth pony with a two-tone pink mane; she was smiling at Rainbow.
 
"Hello there," she said. "How may I be of service, ma'am?"
 
Pushing her nervousness aside for a moment, Rainbow flashed a winning smile and said, "I'd like to talk to Daisy Dreams, please. I’ve heard she knows all about dreams, and I've been having some trouble with them lately."
 
"I am Daisy Dreams, ma'am," replied the mare behind the desk, pointing to a nameplate.
 
Rainbow did a double-take. "But, you're–"
 
"...an earth pony? Yes, yes I am."
 
Having never been known for her tact, Rainbow bluntly said, "Huh? How can an earth pony do all that dream stuff you do?"
 
"Oh, I have some equipment that helps me," Daisy replied. "It's quite astounding what technology allows us non-unicorn ponies to do these days."
 
"Oh, okay," replied Rainbow. "But, uh, are you sure that you're... um..."
 
"...qualified? Yes, yes I am." Daisy spoke with a deadly serious voice, her eyes narrowing to give her face a stern expression. "You might even say that being an earth pony makes me more qualified than the unicorns dominating this field."
 
Rainbow smiled uneasily. She hadn't been aware that "subconscious investigation" was a field.
 
"Oh, it is," Daisy said casually, as if she'd read Rainbow's mind. "The competition is ruthless, I'll tell you that much. Now, Ms..."
 
"Dash. Rainbow Dash."
 
Daisy nodded and picked up a pen in her mouth, quickly scribbling a few words down on the clipboard in the middle of her desk. "Ms Rainbow Dash, please walk to the back room with me. I’m going to set up my equipment and while I’m doing that, you can tell me all about your situation. Try to relax. I'm here to help."
 
With that, Daisy got up from her desk and led Rainbow into her office’s back room. Rainbow caught a glimpse of her cutie mark – a daisy with green petals.

"It's because daisies aren't supposed to have green petals, Ms Dash," Daisy said nonchalantly. "That's the kind of thing that can only happen in a dream."

Once they were in the small back room, Daisy pointed Rainbow to a red therapist's couch, which the latter obediently flopped down on.

"Now, please tell me about your troubles," Daisy said, as she sat down in the corner of the room and started fiddling with something.
 
"It's been going on for months, Doc," Rainbow said. "Every night, I have the same dream. It always starts the same way, always continues the same way, and always ends the same way – with my waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep!"
 
"Mm-hm," Daisy mumbled. "What happens in this dream?"
 
Rainbow closed her eyes and cast her mind back. Even though she'd been having the same dream over and over again, it still took her a few moments to formulate her thoughts around it and piece together how it would happen. "It always starts with my trying out for the Wonderbolts.
 
"I'm a flier, you see, but not just somepony who flaps her wings to get from A to B, no – I love to fly. I speed! I race! I do tricks! I feel the wind whipping through my mane and I blast through clouds! Getting accepted into the Wonderbolts would be a dream come true! Uh... well, another dream."
 
The ends of the wires in Daisy's hooves sparked as she jerked them apart. "I take it that this dream involves your getting rejected by the Wonderbolts, then?"
 
"Weellll... not exactly," Rainbow continued, squinting one eye. "The dream never gets that far. It starts in the Wonderbolts' stadium in Canterlot. I'm there with my friends, getting ready for my Wonderbolts audition. I'm doing my warm-ups, taking a few laps around the airspace, honing a few tricks, the usual. Anyway, my friends all cheer for me – they're sitting in the stadium – as I finish off my warm-up with a Buccaneer Blaze. I fly down to join them, and they're all excited and tell me what I good job I did. They're right, of course – Rainbow Dash always brings her A-game."
 
"And then?" prompted Daisy.
 
"And then I see the warm-up of the next pony. She's got this serious look in her eyes, and she does everything with this unbelievable precision. She carves sculptures in the clouds, and seems to never even break a sweat. So now I'm intimidated. Applejack – she's one of my friends – tells me I have nothing to worry about, and that that pony doesn't fly nearly as well as I do.
 
"That makes me feel a little better, but then we watch the next warm-up. And the next, and the next. Everypony who goes up is more perfect than the last, and I'm getting more and more nervous. I start to question my abilities..."
 
There was a pause. Rainbow Dash closed her mouth and took a few uneven breaths through her nose. Her eyes were still closed. To Daisy, it looked almost as if she were asleep.
 
"You stopped talking, Rainbow Dash," she said. "That's okay. You're obviously uncomfortable about discussing the rest of the dream. Or maybe you can't remember it. It's okay. I'll find out the rest soon enough."
 
During Rainbow's story, Daisy had moved the device she had been preparing to the middle of the small room. It was a grey plastic box with an input panel on the top and two tubes attached to its sides. The tubes ended in straps that were the perfect size to fit around a pony's foreleg.
 
"Give me your forehoof, Ms Dash," said Daisy.
 
Rainbow nodded and let her left front leg droop off the end of the couch.
 
Daisy quickly wrapped one of the straps around it, pressing the velcro sides together firmly to make sure they stuck. She then did the same thing to her own left front leg with the other tube.
 
Rainbow shifted uncomfortably on the couch and her left foreleg squirmed. A faintly itchy sensation had come over it, and she suddenly felt too numb to reach out and scratch.
 
Daisy spoke up, pronouncing her words slowly and deliberately. "Just relax, Ms Dash. The device will take about a minute to place me into your dreams. First, it needs to put both of us to sleep..."
 

***

 
Blackness surrounded Daisy. She was a part of the blackness, and it was a part of her. A faint ticking sounded in the back of her mind, and she waited.
 
She was in the space between wakefulness and sleep, and she took the opportunity to remind herself of a few things. Floating formless in the void, she was able to think with utmost clarity, and recounted Rainbow Dash's story to herself three times in quick succession, made a rough analysis of her patient’s personality, and thought back on previous cases that displayed some similarity.
 
She then took an opportunity to realise that none of this would prepare her for the dreamworld, because it never had.
 
Lastly, she told herself not to get too involved; not to let this end like so many of her previous jobs.
 
The ticking stopped.
 

***

 
The darkness exploded into bright lights and vibrant colours. Daisy's vision was fuzzy, her ears were ringing, her legs were wobbly, and she felt sick to her stomach. There was a tinge of comforting familiarity to these symptoms, but she had never fully gotten used to the feeling of entering another pony's dream.
 
Daisy concentrated on focusing her vision on a blurry white thing in front of her, and as it turned from an oblong smudge into a marble pillar, her knees steadied. The sounds of casual chatter and flapping wings reached her ears as the ringing died away.
 
She was sitting in one of the plastic seats in the Wonderbolts' stadium. Around her, a few clumps of other ponies chatted among themselves. They were all too far away for Daisy to be able to make out what they were saying, but she assumed they were all the friends and family of the pegasi who had come to audition. One of the groups had to be Rainbow Dash's friends, but there was no way she would be able to tell which just by looking.
 
Or would she? A quick glance into the middle of the stadium revealed a zigzagging streak of rainbow colours. All Daisy had to do was find the group that was paying the most attention to Dash's warm-up!
 
Daisy slowly scanned the stadium, paying careful attention to each group's body language. The signs that she was looking for were subtle things – movement of the eyes, slight upturns of the lips, dilation of the pupils and a hundred other little indicators. Dash's group of friends could be any one of the many clusters of ponies sitting on the stands.
 
"Woo-hoo! Go Dashie!" shouted an enthusiastic voice from behind her.
 
Daisy spun around to see a pink pony with a poofy mane whooping and hollering. She had yellow foam mitts on both of her forehooves, and was waving them around madly. The four friends who surrounded her – a pegasus, another earth pony and a unicorn, Daisy noted – seemed to pay no heed to her antics, and were displaying all the subtle body language quirks for which Daisy had been looking.
 
Rainbow Dash finished her warm-up and swooped down to join her friends just as Daisy was walking towards them. Daisy stopped in her tracks, taking the opportunity to listen in their conversation. Her instincts were screaming at her to join in and make some attempt to ingratiate herself with them, but she held back, telling herself not to get too involved.
 
She shuddered, remembering the early cases she'd bungled hopelessly by making her presence known too early. Although the directness of her methods was what made them so effective, they had caused their fair share of problems.
 
No, Daisy wouldn't make that mistake this time. For now, she would stay silent and observe.
 
"Wowie, Dashie!" shouted the pink pony. "That was sooooo cool! No! Amazing! No! Stupendous! No! Spectacular! No! Stu-tacular-zing! N– Yes! It was stu-tacular-zing!"
 
"You know it, Pinkie!" Dash said proudly. "And that was just the warm-up. Just wait 'til my actual audition and you'll see some real action!"
 
Daisy tuned out the rest of the conversation after noting that it consisted entirely of Dash's friends’ fawning over her flying and her hyping up the performance that was to come. These kinds of fawning dream conversations hadn't even appealed to her the first time she'd suffered through one.
 
Halfway through Dash's speech on how she was going to be the first pegasus to pull off the Ravenclaw Ricochet, Daisy noticed a shift. One moment, Dash was talking to her friends. The next, they were all gaping in awe at the tan-coated pegasus’s carving a rabbit into a cloud. She appeared to be quite far into her warm-up already.
 
Time skips were quite common in dreams, but it was utterly impossible to predict them. On the one hoof, Daisy quite liked the way they saved everypony from waiting through boring moments as they did in real life, but on the other hoof –
 
"Did you see that pegasus?!" Dash gasped. "She was even better than the cloud carver!"
 
– they were horribly disorientating.
 
A shining white pegasus stallion flew into the middle of the stadium, his head held high, letting his silver mane whip around in the wind.
 
"My, my, my," said Dash's white unicorn friend, "who is that?"
 
Dash glared at her. "The enemy, Rarity."
 
"Right, right, of course," Rarity replied, waving a hoof dismissively.
 
Judging by the pained expressions Dash's face was making, the stallion was a formidable enemy indeed. He blasted around the arena again and again in a silver streak, looped around countless times without even looking dizzy and nonchalantly performed three Buccaneer Blazes in rapid succession.
 
For a finishing move, he gathered up a hefty amount of cloud between his hooves, looped around a few times and then shot up, high above the stadium.
 
Daisy and Dash both had to squint to see the little white dot far above their heads, until it started getting bigger. The stallion was in freefall, cloud still gripped between his four legs. As he plummeted past, Daisy noticed his serene, quietly confident facial expression.
 
The stallion smacked into a cloud just below the level of the stands and immediately bounced off. Daisy heard Dash gasping in horror. Tears welled in her eyes as the stallion shot back up towards the stadium. Moments before hitting a column, he spun his body around and let his cloud hit it.
 
Daisy raised an eyebrow as the stallion bounced off the pillar and quickly turned around to do the same thing to another. As he ping-ponged around the stadium, Daisy scratched her head and wondered just how much of the trick was dream logic and how much was natural pegasus weirdness.
 
"The Ravenclaw Ricochet," Dash rasped. "He did it in the warm-up."
 

***

 
Rainbow Dash was in the shower-room underneath the stands, alone. Except she wasn't alone. Daisy stood by the door, watching Dash pace around the room, verbalising her many frustrations.
 
"Silver-Mane does Ravenclaw Ricochets in his sleep, Tan-Coat is better than me at flying and sculpture, and I'm sure Lightning Flash could do a Sonic Rainboom if she tried! I've got no chance!"
 
The despondency in Dash's voice was heartbreaking, and Daisy was hard-pressed to stop herself from rushing over to comfort the poor girl, but a deep breath and a stern reminder kept her at the door. The time to interfere was not yet right.
 
Dash slumped onto her haunches. "I might as well just give up and go home! But I've trained so hard for this! I've given up so much..."
 
Daisy had to hook a back leg around the doorframe to stop herself from rushing in to comfort Dash.
 
"I'm trying my absolute best, but I just..."
 
A shiver crawled down Daisy's spine. The atmosphere had become significantly colder. Daisy gulped, knowing that such a development couldn't lead anywhere good.
 
"Oooooh, Raaainbooowww..." whispered an airy, echoing voice that seemed to come from all directions at once. "Raaainbooooowwwww Daaaaaash..."
 
Wisps of black smoke entered the locker room, crawling through the open windows, out of grates in the lockers, and even directly through some of the walls. The smoke wafted towards a single spot right in front of Dash, where it began to take shape.
 
A blurry all-black pegasus with a shaven mane and tail slowly grew more distinct as it continued to chant, "Ooooooh, Raaaaaainbow Daaaaaaash..."
 
"What is it? What do you want?" asked Dash.
 
"I waaaant tooooo heeelp you, Rainbow Dash," the pegasus replied, its voice growing steadier as it finished solidifying. "I want you to realise your dreams, because you have worked hard for this audition, and you deserve to be a Wonderbolt. No other pony is as worthy as you, Rainbow Dash."
 
Daisy raised an eyebrow. This was something new – something she definitely had to observe before interfering with.
 
"As if!" Dash retorted. "If that were true, I'd be able to carve Mt Rushmare into the clouds, or do a Double Rainboom, but I'm not! The others are just better than me..."
 
The black pegasus smiled menacingly. "In raw physical ability, perhaps, but certainly not in spirit. Have you seen where they're from? Lightning Flash, at least, is the daughter of Stormy Skies, the owner of Cloud Works, the the largest chain of weather factories in all Equestria! She’s been trained by retired Wonderbolts since birth, and has probably seen more than a few magical wingspan enhancements. Don't even get me started on the others..."
 
"Don't worry. I won't," Dash said, her tone softening. "I'm sick of talking about them anyway... what's Rarity's problem, fawning over Silver-Mane or whoever that guy is? He's not even that good-looking!"
 
"My point, Rainbow Dash," said the black pegasus sternly, "is that you are the most deserving pony, because you have worked the hardest and overcome the most adversity to be here. It is your character and not your abilities that makes you worthy to be a Wonderbolt."
 
"Really?! Do you think they'll notice? Like, notice my character and stuff?"
 
The pegasus smirked. "Of course not! They're performers, not psychologists! No offense to any of them, but they lack the subtle analysis skills."
 
Dash's face fell. "Oh..."
 
"But you see," said the black pegasus, stepping forward to stare into Dash's magenta eyes with her black-on-black ones, "that's where I come in! I'm going to help you get the recognition you so richly deserve."
 
"But how?"
 
"I'm going to help you make the competition a little more fair. Level the playing field, so to speak."
 
"Huh?"
 
"I'm going to help you cheat, Rainbow Dash."
 
That was the sign. Daisy's back leg unhooked itself from the doorframe and she galloped into the locker room, making Dash and the black pegasus turn to the door and gasp.
 
"Stop! Don't do it, Rainbow Dash! You don't want to cheat!"
 
The black pegasus stared into Daisy's eyes, grinning madly. The vileness of her expression ignited some spark of rage deep within Daisy, who redoubled her galloping to charge the pegasus.
 
Determination in her eyes, Daisy lowered her head and dashed toward the pegasus.
 
CLANG! Her head collided with the hard metal surface of a locker, and all too late she remembered that the black pegasus was made out of smoke.
 
"Of course she doesn't want you to even the odds, Rainbow Dash," snarled the black pegasus. "She's one of your competitors!"
 
Daisy's eyes widened in horror as she focused her thoughts on her back. Sure enough, she felt a pair of wings unfurl and flap. She really hated dreams sometimes.
 

***

 
The world fell away.
 
Daisy stared at a blurry photo of a pegasus family that floated before her eyes. The mother had a green coat and an orange mane, and the father's indigo mane complemented his cyan coat. Their daughter had a similar-coloured coat to the father, but hers was slightly brighter. Her fuzzy rainbow mane confirmed her identity.
 
As Daisy stared at the photo, she saw the ponies in it stretch their limbs and get up from where they had been sitting. They slowly moved towards the edges of the photo, and it grew to accommodate their movement. It also grew in scale, until the mother and father were the same height as Daisy.
 
The carpet felt soft under Daisy's hooves. At some point, the photo had become a real scene, and she now found herself in Rainbow Dash's childhood home.
 
"Rainbow," she heard a stern voice say, "please try harder next time."
 
"B-but, Dad... I got second place!" squeaked a filly's voice.
 
Daisy turned around, and saw Rainbow and her father. The former was sitting on her haunches in front of a sofa, with a hopeful look in her eyes and a silver medal around her neck. The latter was sitting on the sofa, engrossed in a newspaper.
 
"Yes, I know. You've told me," Rainbow's father continued. "Just try a little harder next time and you'll get first place."
 
"But Dad, I tried my best! It's ju–"
 
"No excuses, young lady. If you'd tried your best, you'd have a gold medal."
 
Tears started to well up in Rainbow's eyes. Noticing this, her father shifted on the sofa and looked down at her, bearing a very slight smile.
 
"Rainbow, dearest, please listen: you need to understand now that life is hard, and that second place isn't going to get you anywhere. There's no use in saying that you tried your best if you didn't do the best. You need to win, because winning is what matters, and winners are the ones who count. I'm just looking out for you, Rainbow; do you understand?"
 
"Y-yes Dad."
 
"Good."
 
Its purpose fulfilled, the family scene melted away, leaving Daisy alone in the dark void.
 
Well, not completely alone.
 
"Heeelllllooooo, Daaaaaisyyyyy Dreeeeeeammmsssss," said a wispy voice. "Ssssooo nnice to make your acquaintance."
 
"The feeling's not mutual," Daisy retorted.
 
The voice cackled with sinister laughter. "Oh, you are rich! Do you even know who I am, Ms Dreams?"
 
"I have a few theories."
 
"Well then scrap all of them, 'cause they're wrong! Whatever you thought I was, I'm not that. I'm something far more powerful and dangerous than you could ever imagine – something capable of, on a whim, bending gods to its will."
 
"Do tell me more."
 
"Well, I was going to be more theatrical about this reveal, but your pony sarcasm is ruining it for me. May as well just spit it out now: I'm a Nightmare. I'm your greatest fears, your most potent insecurities, your darkest dreams, and your strengths used against you."
 
"You don't say."
 
"This sarcasm does not amuse me. I am a Nightmare – the same one that inhabited your Princess Luna for a thousand years! After she was cruelly stolen from me, I found a new home in the soul of young Rainbow Dash: a pony I take great delight in corrupting."
 
"I'm sure."
 
"This little pony is a delicious bundle of insecurities, wrapped up in a thin blanket of 'coolness'. Her great confidence is backed up by her tremendous skill, but both can be used as crippling weapons in the right circumstances – as you witnessed first-hoof, Ms Dreams."
 
"Uh-huh."
 
"In that way, she's not unlike you yourself."
 
"Really?"
 
"Little Daisy, the dream heroine. With the guts of a thousand ponies and the brains of none, you're able to meddle even where those stuffy unicorn competitors of yours fear to look. They're slow, detached, and cold where you're dynamic and vibrant. You get results where they get data points."
 
"I don't believe you're this interested in complimenting me. Where are you going with this?"
 
The Nightmare cackled. "The unicorns never would have caused what you did to your mother, Daisy. You just get too involved... your greatest strength is a glaring weakness."
 
Daisy was silent for a moment. For the briefest fraction of a second, her calm facade cracked into a slight frown. The darkness around her exploded with images – painful images. Her mother... a manticore... flashes of red...

Then, as suddenly as the images had come, they were gone. The Nightmare cackled.

Daisy fought to retain her calm demeanour and gathered her thoughts. "I know what you're trying to do, Nightmare. I know you're trying to make it out like you're some great and terrible force of evil, but I've been through one too many messed-up pony minds to believe that."
 
"Believe what you will. It changes nothing."
 
"Very true. Even if you fooled me into thinking you were what you say you are, you'd still just be a dark figment of Rainbow Dash's psyche, trying to spook me by reading my own darkness. Yeah, I know you can do that. Must be easy with me; I've got a lot of darkness."
 
"And eventually, it will overcome you. When that happens, I shall be ready. But for now, let's watch Rainbow Dash get accepted into the Wonderbolts, shall we?"
 

***

 
Daisy trotted into the grandstands and immediately sought out Dash's friends. They were sitting in the same place as before, chatting while they waited for Dash's audition.
 
While the Nightmare had been lecturing her, she'd come up with a desperate last-ditch attempt at salvaging the situation. Dash couldn't be allowed to get away with cheating.
 
A glance above her showed Daisy that four of the Wonderbolts were sitting behind a table in the box at the top of the stadium. She'd never kept up with aerial performance or been an attendee of the races, but she recognised Spitfire's orange mane among them.
 
Above the judges' heads, a speaker crackled. "Ms Lightning Flash! Please come to the arena, Ms Lightning Flash. The Wonderbolts are waiting."
 
Once again, Daisy knew that she had to act immediately. This time, however, she had a plan.
 
Daisy focused on Dash's pegasus friend, using one of her newer techniques. She breathed in and out steadily, feeling herself slowly fade out. When the feeling was right, she closed her eyes.
 
Fluttershy opened her green eyes and stared at the faces of her friends. She smiled serenely at the strangers, before spinning around to face the arena. Her wings flicked out.
 
"What are you doing, Fluttershy?!" cried the purple unicorn, as her friend lifted off the stands and soared into the center of the arena.
 
"You're not Lightning Flash!" added the pink earth pony. "Unless there's something you haven't told us... Are you Lightning Flash?!"
 
Fluttershy, who was Daisy, ignored her friends and barrelled towards the centre of the arena. If her intuition was correct, she would soon be joined by another interloper.


***


Dash sat on her haunches in the waiting area under the stands on the far side of the arena. The other fliers milled around her, talking incoherently amongst themselves. Dash's eyes darted to the underside of the area of the grandstands her friends occupied, but soon darted away as she refused to think about the trap she'd set up.

Dash told herself that her competitors deserved what they were going to get – for cheating, for being entitled, for having flawed personalities and cushy lives provided by privileged families. For them, failing a Wonderbolts try-out would be an uncomfortable blip in their otherwise perfect lives. For her, it would be crushing defeat.

Slowly, Dash's eyes wandered across the stands above her trap. They were an arena-length away, but she could make out the fuzzy dot-shapes of ponies sitting on them. Her friends were a blob of purples, pinks, whites, oranges and yellows.

A yellow-and-pink blur separated from the group as Dash watched. It opened its indistinct wings and soared, becoming clearer and clearer. Dash watched this for a moment before her mind fully processed it. Then she panicked.  
 
"Fluttershy, no!" The scream cut through the air like a knife. "Go back!"
 
A desperate rainbow streak shot towards the underside of the stands. Moments later, she reappeared with a mass of wires and bottles in her mouth. She dropped the object on the bottom level of the stands, and sunk into a moping heap. A gasp from the judges' box carried through their microphones and made her tighten herself into a fetal position.

Fluttershy smiled, noting that Dash's device was a Poison Joke Bomb. A very clever choice, she thought as she released Fluttershy and materialised unnoticed on the stands.
 
"I... I tried to cheat, Fluttershy," Dash whispered as her friend landed beside her. "I was going to ruin Lightning Flash's audition with Poison Joke. A stealth bomb... nopony would have known."
 
"Shhhh, it's okay, Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy said, patting her on the head. "We all make mistakes."
 
Daisy stood to one side, watching the tender scene. Things were going a lot better than she had expected. It put her on edge.
 
"NNNOOOOOO!" An unearthly scream ripped through the stadium, shaking the cloud columns and knocking Daisy to the floor. "Wwwwrrrrrong!"
 
Before Daisy's eyes, the stands warped into a black face with glowing red eyes and giant, sharp, white teeth. The screams of the ponies who had been sitting there were short and bone-chilling as they all fell into the creature's mouth.
 
"Nnnnooooo, Rrraainbow Dash, you should not have done that," said the voice, which still echoed all around them. "I do not appreciate such ungratefulness! Didn't your mother ever tell you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?!"
 
With the utterance of the word "mouth", the face floated free of the stage, and bubbled and wobbled as it stretched into the body of a great and terrible alicorn.
 
"W-what are you?" asked Dash. "No, never mind. I don't care. Whatever you are, you need to go away. Now. I'm not going to let you make me hurt my friends – or anypony else!"
 
The alicorn was now floating in the sky above them, which had gone dark with storm clouds. "Rainbow Dash... always loyal to her 'friends', even when it means destroying her only chance at making something of herself. You could be famous and powerful, but you tie millstones around your neck. Truly, that is your greatest weakness."
 
"No," Dash replied, raising herself to her hooves. "It's my greatest strength."
 
The alicorn's eyes widened in horror. With a chilling wail, it flew at her, horn lowered.

"And now I get involved," Daisy whispered to herself. Before the horn could make contact, she jumped between the alicorn and Dash.
 
The horn went straight through her, stopping just inches from Dash's nose.
 
Dash screamed.


***


Darkness returned.

"You're not a real Nightmare. You're just a nightmare."


***

 
"I think that should take care of it," said Daisy.
 
Blinking the light out of her eyes, Rainbow lifted herself up and rubbed her head. She had a bit of a headache, and her back was stiff from lying on the couch for so long. Nonetheless, she felt much better than she had when she came in. She was at peace.
 
Daisy was sitting next to the couch, patiently watching. "What did you learn today, Ms Dash?" she asked.
 
"It's fuzzy..." Rainbow replied slowly. "I was... I was going to cheat! I was going to ruin my competitors with a Poison Joke Bomb... but then I didn't because... because Fluttershy!"

Rainbow sprang up into a standing position on the couch. "Suddenly it was Fluttershy who flew out there, and I..."

Rainbow stepped down from the couch, her eyes moist with tears. "That dream usually... it usually goes on longer. There's a bit where Lightning Flash... she's a ghost and..."

Blinking the tears out of her eyes and quickly regaining her usual demeanour, Rainbow Dash straightened up and looked Daisy in the eyes. "Thank you. I know what's wrong now."
 
"Very good, ma'am," Daisy replied politely. "That'll be fifty bits, please."
 

***

 
That night, Daisy stood atop a great mountain. Tumultuous storm clouds crackled and rolled above her, and the land around and below was barren and eroded, save for the few green-petalled flowers that grew around each of her four hooves.
 
Hovering in front of her was another Daisy Dreams – one with a pitch-black coat, a pair of bat wings and jagged yellow teeth. The creature's mane was speckled with stars, and spread out from her head in countless tentacles.
 
"Once more, Daisy, you have defeated the darkness inside another only to grow the darkness within yourself," the Shadow-Daisy snarled. "Soon, you shall bend to your own wicked will and finally unlock your true potential."
 
Daisy blinked.

Shadow-Daisy flicked her starry mane. "I must thank you for this newest addition to my repertoire – Ms Dash's dark side had some ideas that were just too good not to take."

"If you say so," Daisy said, feeling bored.
 
"You cannot possibly hope to fight it much longer. I will consume you." Shadow-Daisy bared her discoloured teeth.
 
"Yeah," Daisy replied, "maybe."






[Story Notes]



> A Mind Forever Organising
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


I Dream of Daisies: "A Mind Forever Organising"
by Ezn

 
The library was dark and silent, save for occasional flashes of purple magic and a soft clopping of hooves on its wooden floor. "Wasn't there a candle here somewhere a second ago?" asked Twilight Sparkle. "A lit candle?"
 
"No," replied Twilight Sparkle. "You're just imagining things. We don't need light to read."
 
"Hmm... I guess not, no."
 
The conversation ended, and silence returned to the library. However, it was a short-lived silence, soon shattered by a scuffling from the other end of the room and the resulting clatter of books. "Guys! Help!" cried Twilight. "I'm trapped under all these bo–"
 
Twilight and Twilight reared on their hindhooves and sprinted across the room to where the books had fallen and pinned Twilight to the floor.
 
"Twilight! Are you okay?" asked Twilight.
 
"Yes, I'm fine. Just get these books off of me!"
 
"What happened?"
 
"I don't know. They fell."
 
"Books don't just fall on their own, Twilight." Twilight and Twilight cocked their eyebrows.
 
"Yes, yes they do!" Twilight replied, trying to push the books off her.
 
"That doesn't make sense! What's going on with you, Twilight? You're not yourself."
 
"I'm perfectly myself." Twilight's voice took on a dark edge. "More so than even you..."
 
"Twilight, you're starting to scare us."
 
From beneath the books, Twilight sighed. With two swift, sweeping motions of her forelegs, she freed herself, sending the books rocketing to either end of the library. Then she stood up, taller than Twilight and Twilight.
 
"Twilight, you –"
 
Twilight cut her off. "Come give me a hug, girls!" She stretched her forelimbs out, and they grew as they encircled Twilight and Twilight.
 
The circle tightened. And tightened. And tightened. A bright light flashed. Nopony screamed.
 
Twilight smiled crookedly as she left the empty library behind her.
 

***

 
"Oh, thank goodness you came so quickly, Ms Dreams!"
 
Daisy Dreams stood in front of a door set into a tree, smiling and nodding politely. The unicorn mare in front of her, whose purple mane was fast losing its elegant shape, swiftly ushered her inside Ponyville's library and up its staircase.
 
"Hello, Ms Dash," she said upon entering the bedroom and catching sight of a familiar face.
 
"Daisy!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, beaming. "I knew I could count on you to help out! Twilight's in the bed, right over there."
 
Daisy smiled at the three other ponies around her, who quickly stood aside, allowing her a clear path to Twilight Sparkle's bed. She trotted forward.
 
The mare in the bed was pale and immobile save for very soft breathing. Her face was blank, and her mane was puffy and tangled.
 
"So you say she's been like this since yesterday?" asked Daisy. "You've tried to wake her up and she hasn't responded, correct?"
 
"I even dumped a bucket of water over her head!" Dash exclaimed. "...Dried her up afterwards, of course."
 
"That would account for the odd manestyle."
 
"Poor Twilight..." murmured Rarity.
 
Daisy turned to face Twilight's friends. "Do any of you know what might have led up to this? Did she say anything to any of you before going to sleep?"
 
A youthful voice piped up from the floor. "No ma'am, but I think she just took a nap after finishing a book. She does that sometimes."
 
Daisy looked down to see a young dragon, and was slightly taken aback.
 
"I'm Spike," he said. "Twilight's number one assistant. Don't worry ma'am, I don't eat ponies" – his eyes narrowed – "unless I'm really hungry..."
 
"Oh Spike!" said Pinkie Pie, laughing. "I don't think you could fit a pony in your cute little tummy!"
 
Her friends laughed in unison with her, lightening the atmosphere. Spike was nonplussed.
 
"Master Spike," Daisy said, cutting into the peals of laughter with a serious tone, "do you know what book Ms Sparkle was reading before she went to sleep?"
 
"It's probably that one," Spike replied, pointing to a hardcover book lying face-down on Twilight's bedside table.
 
Daisy flipped the book around with a hoof, recognising it instantly. It was Neural Network's "On the Divisions of the Mind", a book she had read and studied an older edition of intensely, and not something she would have expected to endanger anypony.
 
"And?" Spike asked.
 
Daisy shucked her saddlebags off dramatically. "I'm going in."
 
The room held its breath as Daisy pulled her dream-entering apparatus out of her bags and set them up. She twisted dials, connected wires, and was soon smoothing down the velcro of a strap on Twilight's right forehoof.
 
"Can... can we do anything to help?" asked the quiet, worried voice of Fluttershy.
 
Daisy thought for a moment. "Disconnect me if I'm not back in an hour."
 
Fluttershy and her friends nodded, and Rainbow flashed Daisy a winning smile. "I know you can do it, Ms Dreams! Thanks to you, I've been sleeping like a log for weeks!"
 
"Well, let's hope I don't have the same effect on your friend."
 
Before she could see Dash cringe, Daisy had fastened her own strap and the world faded to black.
 

***

 
In the time that had passed since her first encounter with Rainbow Dash, Daisy had done some research on her and her Ponyville friends. She'd discovered that they were the Elements of Harmony – the six celebrated mares who had saved Equestria from Discord and Nightmare Moon.
 
Nightmare Moon. Daisy shivered and wondered if Twilight's inner darkness would also manifest as a "Nightmare", but only briefly. This was no time for worrying.
 
Daisy called to mind what she remembered of the contents of Neural Network's book. She turned remembered phrases and concepts over in her mind, but still couldn't pin down any connection between it and Twilight's condition.
 
Finally, the darkness around her lifted.
 

***

 
As her vision became clear, Daisy shivered from a sense of déjà vu as she stood in front of the door to Ponyville's tree library, her right forehoof poised to knock on its smooth wood surface.
 
"Hey there!" chirped a voice from behind her as the ringing in her ears died away. "I haven't seen you around here before! Are you new here?"
 
"Just visiting..." Daisy said as she started and turned around, coming face-to-face with Twilight Sparkle.
 
"Oh! Well, if you're a tourist, let me be the first to welcome you to Twilightville!"
 
Daisy opened her mouth to say something but shortly thought better of it. Her jaws snapped shut, and she looked at Twilight for a while.
 
"Well then..." Twilight had been holding the same pleasant smile for long enough for it to stop being pleasant and transform into something awkward and uncomfortable. "Perhaps you'd better come with me, Ms..."
 
"Dreams. Daisy Dreams."
 
Daisy stepped away from the door, much to Twilight's very visible relief, and nodded at her to lead the way.
 
Twilight and Daisy trotted off in the direction of Ponyville's – or perhaps Twilightville's – town hall.
 

***

 
"Welcome to Twilightville's town hall!" Twilight said enthusiastically. "This is where Mayor Twilight Sparkle does all of her important management and paperwork and bureaucracy so that operations can keep running smoothly. Let's go upstairs and say hi!"
 
Daisy glanced at the paintings and photographs which decorated the foyer with quiet amusement. There were sepia-tone pictures of Twilight Sparkle in old-fashioned clothes digging foundations and laying bricks, pictures of Twilight Sparkle pulling ploughs across farmland, and pictures of a butterfly-winged Twilight Sparkle moving clouds around and making rain.
 
As Daisy and Twilight moved down the hallway and up the stairs, the pictures on the walls started to feature multiple Twilights. In one, a Twilight wearing glasses on the end of her nose and an ascot was levitating a giant key towards another Twilight, who stood proudly, with her chest puffed out. In another, two Twilight Sparkles were shaking hooves with each other.
 
The number of Twilights per picture gradually increased, until happy smiling families of Twilights gave way to crowds full of Twilights, all clapping and waving and stomping. Hordes of Twilights could be seen buzzing about town, wrapping up winter, and throwing parties for each other.
 
"We're here!" said Twilight, as Daisy's eyes passed over a final row of photos and came to rest on a door. "I'm sure the mayor will be enthralled to meet you, Ms Dreams!"
 
Twilight smiled and pushed the door open with a hoof, revealing a modest office dominated by a large desk, behind which a chair faced away from Daisy. A device on the desk began to shake and make a high-pitched ringing noise, and the chair swivelled around.
 
"Get that for me, would you Twilight?" asked an ascot-wearing Twilight Sparkle.
 
"At once, Mayor Twilight!"
 
Twilight sprang from Daisy's side, scooped a part of the device up with a forehoof, stretching the twisty wire that attached it to the rest, and held it to her ear. Daisy hypothesised that it was a communication device, probably based on similar magic principles as radio.
 
Mayor Twilight smiled at her gently before turning to look at Daisy over the tops of her small spectacle lenses. "And how may I help you, ma'am?"
 
Daisy considered her approach for a moment. She had been hired to wake Twilight up. "Ms Twilight, my name is Daisy Dreams, and I'm not you."
 
"Yes, I can see that. I take it this means research into illusions or shapeshifting is going well? ...Genetics? Oh, what a good idea this was!"
 
Twilight seemed lucid. Perhaps that would make Daisy’s job easier. "Ms Sparkle, I'm not quite sure what you're doing here, but your friends are concerned. They've hired me to wake you up."
 
Somewhere in the middle of Daisy's last sentence, Twilight's eyes had widened into an all-too-familiar awestruck stare. "You enter dreams professionally? Wow, you must be so knowledgeable about all this! How do you like what I've done with this dream?"
 
"It's" – Daisy pondered for a moment – "nice, but not worth worrying your friends for. You need to wake up."
 
"Wake up?" Twilight gasped. "Now? I can't wake up now! I'm in the middle of all this research! There's still so very much to do!"
 
Daisy's heart sunk. As usual, the lucid dreamer actually proved harder to awaken. She'd been a fool to think otherwise.
 
"But it's okay!" Twilight exclaimed. "I don't really need to wake up, because I'm not in any kind of danger. I'm fully in control of this subconscious research environment, and the only problem is that my friends don't know that... but you can tell them! Just leave my dream the same way you came in and tell the girls that Twilight is doing wonderfully and sends her fondest regards!"
 
Daisy lifted an eyebrow. "That would hardly be value for money, Ms Sparkle. Considering the amount of it they're paying me, I think they deserve those fond greetings from the horse's mouth, so to speak."
 
"But I can't just stop everything! You must know enough about dreams to understand that, surely. Have you read Neural Network's 'On the Divisions of the Mind'?"
 
"Extensively, but I don't see what that has to do with... all this."
 
"You must have skimmed the chapter on the processing potential of the subconscious and serious applications of the dream. It's what gave me the idea."
 
Daisy's breath caught in her throat. That chapter hadn't been in her edition, and it was hard to believe stuffy old Professor Neural would deal with dangerous subjects like that.
 
"Figuring out how to bring about a lucid dream of my own construction and prolong it indefinitely was just a matter of basic research. The base spells are all there, and the theory's quite extensive. I'm surprised nopony's tried it before." Twilight continued to rattle off, but by this point Daisy was seeing red.
 
"Nopony's tried it before because it's dangerous!" she hissed.
 
"Provably?" Twilight prodded.
 
Daisy took a deep breath and relaxed. "Does it matter?"
 
"It makes all the difference," Twilight said sagely. "Historically, the pursuit of knowledge has been stunned and crippled many times in many fields because of superstition and baseless fears. Ponies are creatures of assumption and extrapolation, and that is both the foundation of our sciences and their greatest bane."
 
Daisy raised an eyebrow. If the real Twilight Sparkle was anything like this one, then perhaps she’d be doing her friends a favour by leaving her here.
 
"Okay, great, goodbye!" said Twilight, slamming a part of the strange device she'd been talking into down on the rest of it. "That was just Twilight calling in to say everything's going well. Telephones! Such a wonderful invention! There'll be one in every house in Equestria before long, mark my words! Did you know that the telephone –"
 
"Twilight!" Daisy interrupted. She had an idea; a simple one, but it was worth a shot.
 
"Yes?" the Twilights asked in unison.
 
"Please wake up."
 
"No," said Mayor Twilight flatly.
 
"Okay!" Twilight enthused, closing her eyes.
 
"No!" shouted Mayor Twilight, jumping to her feet and shaking the other Twilight. "Don't! You'll ruin everything!"
 
Twilight grinned. "Don't worry, Mayor! I can't ruin everything by waking up because I can't wake up! I tried to earlier, when Ms Dreams arrived here, because I thought something had gone wrong! But I wasn't able to, and I'm still not! Everything is totally fine!"
 
Mayor Twilight breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, that's good, you can't wake up... Wait. You can't wake up?"
 
"Nope! There's something blocking me."
 
Daisy felt a knot forming in the pit of her stomach. Her hopes of having a quick, straightforward assignment were now thoroughly dashed, and she gritted her teeth, mentally preparing for what she knew – or rather didn't know – was to come.
 
"Can you wake up, Mayor?" Daisy asked. "You should check."
 
The Mayor closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them wider than Daisy had yet seen them. The corners of her mouth dropped, and even her ascot seemed to sag.
 
"I can't wake up," she whispered. "I can't wake up. Something's gone horribly wrong."
 
Daisy's eyes narrowed. "Alright then. Maybe now we can make some progress. Twilight, I need you to tell me everything you know about how this dreamstate you've induced works. And then we need to get to the Source."
 
A thundercrack sounded outside. Daisy bit her lip. "Okay, looks like we'll be talking on our way to the Source. Twilight, I need you to remain calm – things like that thunderclap are likely brought on by your stress level, and we don't need to make this any harder for ourselves than it already is."
 
The Mayor nodded dumbly, her face suddenly looking tired. "Calm. Stay calm. I can do that. Let me just start telling you about the dreamstate, then..."
 

***

 
Daisy Dreams and Mayor Twilight left the latter's office, stepping directly from her door to the streets of Ponyville, bypassing the hallway entirely. Once there, Daisy chose a direction at random and beckoned Twilight along it.
 
"The best thing about dreams is that they seldom have consistent geography," Daisy told Twilight, "and so you don't have to look for specific places so much as you have to decide go to them and then walk resolutely for a while."
 
"Hmm, I haven't read about that," Twilight replied. "But I don't remember paying special attention to the exact placement of locations in this dream Ponyville, so I suppose that should still hold true."
 
Twilight went on to tell Daisy all she knew about the dreamstate, to which Daisy listened with rapt attention.
The whole thing had been induced by Twilight casting a heavy-duty sleep spell on herself, and then quickly casting a dream-entering spell before she lost consciousness. As a result, her conscious self had found itself in the barren plains of a dream not yet formed by a subconscious that had just fallen asleep.
 
As she'd hypothesised, Twilight was able to think things into existence, which she tested by building Ponyville in her mind. When that proved successful, she set about the real task she had started the experiment for – doing extra research.
 
Before going to sleep, Twilight had flipped through a large number of books she still hadn't read, so she went into her library and picked one up. Sure enough, she found she could read the text on the page.
 
Twilight then imagined herself going to every one of the books she'd prepared and reading them, and then it was done – any army of Twilights were reading books in the library. But that wasn't enough. Excited at the possibilities, Twilight set about thinking up versions of herself to study the stars, conduct physics and chemistry experiments, simulate the casting of new spells and even return to the Canterlot Royal Archives to brush up on tomes Twilight hadn't read in a long while.
 
"I realise that no dream can be a completely accurate simulation of life, but I figured I'd surely be able to learn at least a few new things from doing this, and so far the knowledge I've managed to gain and strengthen is remarkable! I've discovered what might be the most efficient study method ever devised!"
 
Daisy remained sceptical, but said nothing for fear of upsetting Twilight unnecessarily. Instead, she nodded and smiled as Twilight finished her lecture, and the two ponies walked past the few remaining buildings on the border of Ponyville in silence.
 
"So... what is this 'Source' we're going to?" Twilight asked, once they'd left the town and entered the countryside. "How can you even be sure my dream has one?"
 
"All dreams have a Source, although it may take different forms," Daisy replied. "The Source is what makes your dream a dream, and what can unmake it – that's why we're going there."
 

***

 
Daisy and Twilight walked on along the country road for some time. Twilight pointed out that it lead towards Hoofington in the real Equestria. Daisy kept her eyes on the horizon.
 
As they crested a hill, Twilight nudged Daisy, pointing down at a purple crowd gathered below them. "Look!"
"What are they doing here?" Daisy asked.
 
"I'm not sure." Twilight bit her lip. "I can't remember sending anypony all the way out here..."
 
Twilight and Daisy swiftly descended the hill and trotted up behind the crowd, who on closer inspection they saw where reading books set on the floor. None of the Twilights noticed the newcomers' presence.
 
"Uh... hello?" Mayor Twilight said, rubbing a hoof on the ground nervously. "I'm Mayor Twilight, and I don't remember authorising this research session. So... tell me what's going on here, maybe?"
 
The Twilights in the crowd continued reading.
 
"This is really creepy," Twilight whispered to Daisy. "They're not even seeing me!"
 
"Try again," Daisy replied.
 
"Right, right."
 
Mayor Twilight adjusted her ascot, took a deep breath and set her ears back. "Attention Twilights!" she boomed. "This is your mayor speaking – Alpha Twilight. I am ordering you to cease this unsanctioned studying immediately and return to your assigned tasks! Pay attention!"
 
Twilight's proclamation was loud and harsh, making even Daisy flinch, but the crowd still paid to no heed and continued reading.
 
Mayor Twilight huffed. "What are you reading that's so fascinating?!"
 
There was a quiet snapping sound, and one of the Twilights in the row closest to the Mayor and Daisy looked up and levitated a closed book with a familiar cover in front of her.
 
"Neural Network's 'On the Divisions of the Mind'," she said.
 
A chorus of snaps followed as every Twilight in the crowd closed her book and levitated it. For the first time, they looked up at Mayor Twilight, but their eyes glared and their muzzles frowned.
 
"It's a fascinating read," the Twilight at the front of the crowd continued, "but you already know that. It's just too bad you didn't look deeply enough to see what we have."
 
Daisy's chest felt as if it had been gripped by a vice. "And just what is that?"
 
Twilight's head snapped to the side to face Daisy. "I'm surprised you don't already know, Ms Dreams. Isn't this sort of thing supposed to be your field of expertise?"
 
Daisy said nothing.
 
"Well anyway," Twilight continued, "the chapter on using unicorn magic in dreams mentioned some interesting things about different aspects of the self and their varying magical abilities, with a few side-notes about how cloning magic could hypothetically separate those aspects."
 
Daisy turned to Mayor Twilight for an explanation. "Cloning magic," the Mayor said, "doesn't really clone – it just splits one thing into parts."
 
"Well put, Mayor," Twilight sneered. "Clones will, by their nature, embody one aspect of the personality of their original to a more extreme degree than the original did. That's why the mayor here is only able to act like annoying, lecturey Twilight, and why most of these clones are oblivious to anything that's not a book – but that's not the interesting part."

Twilight took a menacing step forward. "As a unicorn, Twilight has a certain level of magical power. As is well known, hers is well above the average unicorn's, but it's actually not at its full potential, due to some of her more... timid personality aspects."

"And?" asked Daisy, already certain she knew where the conversation was headed.

"I," Twilight continued, holding her nose up in the air, "embody Twilight's most powerful and confident traits, and as such, what I can achieve with magic is many times greater than what she as a whole is capable of."

Twilight's horn glowed pink, and Daisy and Mayor Twilight jumped as the grass below their feet turned from green to purple. It started wiggling slowly, tickling the bottoms of their hooves. Daisy winced.
 
Mayor Twilight's brow creased. "Now hold on, I'm the alpha Twilight, and I'm the one who's in control here. You can't just change the world without my permission."
 
Daisy felt a tension in the air. A light mist was rising around her and the Twilights, chilling their hooves.
 
"If you were really in control, you'd've woken up by now," the dark Twilight said.

Mayor Twilight just glared at her.

"That's what I thought. In order to wake up Twilight Sparkle, you need to... represent her a little better. If you clone yourself once, it splits you in two. If you clone yourself twice, it splits you in three. If you clone yourself a hundred times... well, then you're only one one-hundredth of the mare you once were."
 
"Oh yeah?" Mayor Twilight retorted, sneering. "So are you!"
 
"I wouldn't be so sure of that."
 
The dark Twilight extended a forehoof to her right. It brushed against the Twilight next to her, and static electricity flickered between her hoof and the Twilight's coat. Currents of magenta energy swirled into existence around the dark Twilight's horn, and suddenly shot to the right.
 
The Twilight to her right collapsed and then seemed to melt. Her body grew soft and translucent as the magic hit it, and it was soon hard to tell where the magic ended and she began.
 
Then, with a disgusting sucking sound, the magic was pulled back into the dark Twilight's horn, pulling the melted Twilight along with it. As the magic funnelled back into her horn, the dark Twilight's eyes gleamed and her coat appeared to grow slightly darker.
 
"That's the tenth one," she said. "I am ten times the Twilight Sparkle you are, Mayor, so what I say goes, and I say there's a new mayor in town."
 
"What? No!" Mayor Twilight recoiled in horror as a cloud of purple magic snatched her ascot and spectacles and deposited them on the dark Twilight's neck and snout.
 
"How do I look?"
 
"It doesn't suit you," Daisy said flatly. "You look more like a little filly playing dress-up than an authority figure."
 
"Heh," the dark Twilight replied. "You're probably right. I'll have to figure something else out later."
 
Daisy had an idea. "Maybe you could ask one of your friends for help?"
 
The dark Twilight froze for a brief, almost-imperceptible moment before replying, "A little fashion research should be more than sufficient. Now, I have a spell to cast. Goodbye, Twilight and friend!"
 
Magic shot out of the dark Twilight's horn, flashing and crackling as it split into dozens of tendrils, each one coming down on the head of a different Twilight clone in the crowd. Before the Mayor and Daisy's horrified gaze, the Twilights froze, flashed and disintegrated. All except for one.

The dark Twilight's coat seemed to pulsate with magical energy, and she vanished with a purple flash and a devilish grin, leaving the Mayor and Daisy alone in the field.

Daisy closed her eyes for a moment to collect her thoughts. The beginnings of a plan were taking shape in her mind, and as always, there were too many uncertain variables in the equation.
 
"Ms Dreams?" asked Twilight, her voice weak and fragile. "What do you suggest we do now?"
 
Daisy opened her eyes. "The same as before," she said. "We have to get to the Source. Only, now we have to get there as fast as possible, because that's where Twilight – the other Twilight – will be... should be."
 
"What if she isn't?"
 
"Well then she can't do any harm, so she will be. She's probably there right now. We can't just walk anymore – it's too slow – there's no telling how much further we need to go."
 
Ex-Mayor Twilight looked hopelessly at Daisy. "What other choice do we have?"
 
"Take my hoof," Daisy replied, tapping Twilight's shoulder. "You're going to teleport us to the Source."
 
Twilight gasped. "You can't expect – even if I can – where do I go? I don't even know where the Source is!"
 
"Yes you do." Daisy looked Twilight in the eyes and held her gaze. "The Source is a part of you, a fundamental, basic part of you. It's the place dreams are made, and it's somewhere in your mind. All you have to do is think of the place most important to you, the physical location which matters most and has always mattered most – the place that shaped you into the pony you are."
 
"I've got no idea where that is!"
 
"You do. Just think about it." Daisy lifted Twilight's other forehoof into her own and gave her a small smile. "Just think for a moment. We need to find that other Twilight before she does any damage."
 
"Okay," Twilight replied, taking a deep breath. "The most basic part of me – the place where my dreams are made."
 
As Twilight's chest rose and fell with her slow, measured breaths, her horn began to glow, slowly getting brighter. One by one, beams of magic sprung out from it and into the sky, growing thicker and brighter as her concentration increased.
 
Twilight's eyes shut tight, and Daisy tightened her grip. There was a fainting buzzing noise and a sudden flash of white, and the world disappeared.
 

***

 
Black blinked into white and the world materialised around Twilight and Daisy. They stood on white tiles, surrounded by white walls. Something beeped in the distance.
 
"Where are we?" asked Daisy, blinking.
 
"The hospital I was born in," Twilight cheerfully replied. "This is where I came from, so it must be the Source, right?"
 
Daisy cringed. "N-not exactly."
 
"Why not?" Twilight looked dismayed.
 
"The Source is something more... abstract. It's not where you came from physically, but where you come from mentally. The one place that epitomises you – what you value and how you approach life."
 
"Oh." Twilight was silent for a while, but then brightened up with a realisation. "Oh! I think I know where it is then!"
 
Daisy took Twilight's hooves in her own, and the world faded to black once more.
 

***

 
When colour returned, it was not white but purple. Daisy and Twilight stood on a purple carpet that ran from light purple wall to light purple wall across a narrow corridor. A brown wooden door was set into the wall between them.
 
"This is my parents' house," Twilight told Daisy. "Just beyond this door is my foalhood bedroom, the place I first started studying magic – my special talent, if I haven't mentioned that already."
 
Daisy nodded tentatively. "This could be the Source, or it could not be. There's only one way to find out."
 
Hopping forward, Daisy tipped herself onto her forehooves and let them sink into the thick carpeting. She coiled her hindlegs and then released them in a forceful buck. There was a crack as hooves connected with wood, splintering it.
 
"What do you see?" Daisy asked Twilight.
 
Twilight didn't reply. Her eyes had grown wide with fear, and Daisy had a sinking feeling that she knew why – a feeling that was confirmed as soon as she spun around to face the interior of Twilight Sparkle's foalhood bedroom.
 
Just beyond the doorframe stood Dark Twilight, her coat looking even darker and her mane nearly pitch-black. Her face was twisted into a frightening grin.
 
"Guess this is the Source, then," Daisy said.

"Correct," snarled Dark Twilight. "And now I have you two right where I want you."

Panicked realisation flashed through Daisy's eyes for a brief moment, just as she leapt in front of the Mayor. "Don't come any closer," she threatened. "Twilight, stay behind me."

Dark Twilight cocked an eyebrow. "That's really not going to work. I mean, this is my dream."

For an instant, Daisy felt her limbs seize up. A pink glow lifted her up and then threw her across the corridor. She landed face-first on the carpet with a barely muffled thump.
 
"D-Don't come any closer!" Twilight stammered, scrambling backwards until she bumped into a wall.
 
Daisy turned her head around just in time to be blinded by a bright flash of white light. When she had blinked it out of her eyes, she saw a very dark purple unicorn staring down at her with a burning gaze.
 
"I've absorbed all of them, Ms Dreams," said Dark Twilight. "Now I just have to wake up while standing in the Source, and Twilight's body will be ruled by her most potent side. She will finally have the power to break more barriers in the study of magic than any unicorn before her."
 
Daisy pulled herself to her hooves with no other plan than to charge at Dark Twilight with her head lowered, perhaps stalling her while she thought of something better. But Twilight anticipated this, immediately casting a forcefield spell around Daisy, trapping her.
 
"Like I said before, this is my dream."
 
With that, a torrent of pink magic shot from Twilight's horn, hitting Daisy right in the chest and sending her flying to the far ends of the hallway. She glimpsed Twilight entering her foalhood bedroom, but did not even hit the ground before everything around her turned black.
 

***

 
Light streamed in through and open window, stinging Daisy's eyes as she slowly, groggily opened them. She was in a room... a room with wooden walls, and with books scattered across its floor. There was a bed just in front of her, surrounded by ponies, and she was in Twilight's library in Ponyville.
 
Daisy shot to her hooves and darted to the side of the bed. "Don't let her –"
 
A familiar blast of magic hit her across the snout and sent her tumbling. Amidst the gasps of the ponies around the bed, she landed heavily against a wooden railing.
 
"At long last I'm free!" Twilight exclaimed, her voice taking on a deeper, scratchier tone than was usual. "Free to use my superior magic, unhindered by Twilight Sparkle's weaker qualities, to change Equestria."
 
Twilight leapt up, letting her covers fly off the bed. Her five friends cautiously stepped back.
 
"Now, now, Twilight dear, we don't want..." Rarity began, trailing off as Twilight's fiery gaze dried her throat.
 
"Don't want what? Me to realise my full potential? Me to prove just how much better I am than all of you and how little I truly need 'friends'? I feel stronger, smarter, better."
 
"That's pretty much the gist of it, Ms Sparkle," Daisy said, picking herself up. There was a spark in her eyes that hadn't been there moments before.

A small voice squeaked, "Y-Yes... because you do need friends, T-Twilight."

Twilight cast a scornful gaze at Fluttershy, who whimpered and shrank back.

"Fluttershy's right, Twilight," Rarity said, stepping in front of her friend. "What you want to do right now will only hurt and bring you pain in the long run. You need us... and we need you."

Twilight's eyes widened in horror as Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie stepped towards her with determination in their eyes.

"Don't be a fool, Twilight."

"Yeah, listen to Rarity!"

"Come on, Grumpy McSerious! Smile! Lighten up a bit and maybe your coat will too!"

Dark Twilight grimaced and snorted air through her nostrils. The books on a nearby bookshelf glowed pink and flew off their shelves.

"Twilight!"

Books shot across the library, hitting Twilight's friends. The first volume of an encyclopedia grazed Applejack's side. Rarity batted away a torrent of magazines. Fluttershy ducked out of the way of a paperback. An open book smacked into Daisy's face. She paused, then brushed it away with a hoof.

"You're gonna have to try harder than that to keep us down!" Dash shouted, hovering in the air as books zipped past her, just missing.

"Don't tempt me!" Twilight growled, running out of books and extending her magic to an entire bookcase.

The sounds of cracking and splintering echoed across the room as Twilight strained her magic. "If all my friends... want to do is keep me down... then I don't need... friends!"

The bookcase came away from the wall with a loud snap. A wave of terror passed across the faces of Twilight's friends, but was replaced by set jaws of determination.

"Jes' try," said Applejack.

Twilight stopped, holding the bookcase a few inches above the floor with her magic, and giving Daisy enough time to step in front of her friends.

With a soft chuckle, Daisy kicked a nearby book over the floor to Twilight. "Read it."

Twilight looked down at the book. The title was smudged. "What happened to this book?"

"It's not the book," Daisy replied. "It's you, Twilight. Do you remember the chapter of 'On the Divisions of the Mind' about telling the difference between a dream and reality?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"You can't read in a dream. This is a dream."

"Impossible! lt's just one book!"

"Rarity, show her more books."

"With pleasure." Rarity's horn glowed blue and the books scattered around her and her friends lifted off the floor and arranged themselves neatly in front of Twilight's eyes. All of their titles were smudged, as were the pages inside.

"What's more," Daisy said, "it'd be mighty hard for me to have entered your dream without my equipment." She motioned to the empty space besides Twilight's bed, where she'd set up her equipment in the real world.

Twilight's eyes bugged out in shock. The bookcase behind her dropped back onto the floor.

"You can throw that around all you like," Daisy said. "It's your dream."

Panicked realisation hit the Dark Twilight, and she tried to light up her horn again, producing only sparks. A black steam rose from her coat. "What – what's – ah!"

Bright bolts of electricity coursed over Twilight's body, as if she was being electrocuted, and she collapsed on the floor, eyes closed. A spark flew from her horn, and then slowly fluttered to the ground.

"Is she..." asked Fluttershy.

"No," said Daisy. "Just unconscious. You won't be rid of her that easily."

Daisy turned to Twilight's five friends, and a small smile crept across her face as she saw their eyes slowly changing colour. Rainbow Dash's magenta cooled into a dark purple, and Fluttershy's light turquoise darkened into the same colour.

Applejack's orange coat turned lavender, and Pinkie's curly straightened, a horn growing out of the top of her head and poking through it.

Daisy blinked and was looking at five Twilight Sparkles, all smiling warmly at her. She gave them all a curt nod, and then she disappeared.


***

 
"Ms Dreams? We... um... it's been an hour."
 
Daisy blinked a few times before fully opening her eyes. Fluttershy grinned sheepishly at her. A glance at her device showed that it had been powered down.
 
"Good job, girls. How's Miss Sparkle?"
 
Fluttershy frowned. "She's still – oh, wait, was that..."
 
The five ponies rushed to Twilight's bed and crowded around her. At first, her forehooves twitched  slightly, but soon her breathing deepened, and she slowly, groggily opened her eyes.
 
"Am I...?"
 
A pink hoof thrust a book in front of her eyes. "If you can read it, you're back in the real world."

"'On the Divisions of the Mind', by Neural Network," Twilight read, breathing a sigh of relief. "I am never reading that book again!"
 
Daisy smiled sympathetically and withdrew the book to herself, opening it and flipping through a few pages. "I don't think it was the book, Twilight. I've read this book cover to cover many times, and I can promise you that it contains nothing about a pony's dark self having more powerful magic than her, or about the 'potential of dreams for research and scientific experimentation'." She chuckled darkly at the last part.

"I don't see what you're saying, Ms Dreams," Twilight said, her brow creasing.

Daisy took a deep breath. "Although one cannot read in a dream, one's mind may contemplate books read recently, and because of the way dreams affect one's perception of reality, one's mind may embellish those books. 'Divisions' does mention the 'dark side' of a pony in passing, but your own dark side obviously fabricated the rest."

Twilight's brow creased further as she fell into thought. "So... my 'dark side' convinced me of the possibilities of using a dream as a scientific testing ground?"

"I believe so. It seems silly now – dreams are far too subjective and biased to simulate objective reality with any degree of authenticity – but it didn't seem silly in the dream, and you obviously cast a dream-entering spell on yourself within your dream, entering a second dream..."

"...and Dark Twilight used that to take control."

Daisy grinned. "Precisely."

"Could... could she have taken control of the real me? In this world."

"I'm – I'm not certain." Daisy rubbed her chin with a hoof. "It is possible that she may have, had she not mistaken the first dream layer for reality."

Twilight raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Why did she do that? It seems... really weird."

"The further down you go, the harder it is to keep track of where the dreams end and reality begins. Even if you're lucid, the dream logic plays tricks on your mind. Hence why so many of your clones stared at smudged pages with the belief that they were reading."

Daisy paused for a moment and cast her eyes down before looking back up at Twilight. Her expression was hard. "And hence why I didn't realise how impossible the idea of using a dream for research and experimentation was in the first place."

With that, Daisy nodded curtly at the six ponies and one dragon in the room and turned around to leave.

"Wait!" cried Twilight. "What if it happens again?! I read lots of books, and surely my dark side can twist –"

"But now you know she's there," Daisy interrupted, glancing knowingly at Rainbow Dash. "She won't catch you unaware again. Be vigilant, Twilight Sparkle."

Hooves softly clopped down the wooden staircase, and a door creaked open.

"My bill's in the mail."






[Story Notes]